15 Historic Documents in the Vatican’s Private Archive

For more than 200 years, beginning with its founding in 1612, the Vatican Apostolic Archive housing the popes’ private documents was completely closed to the public. Pope Leo XIII decided to open the library (formerly known as the “secret” archive, Archivum Secretum Vaticanum) in 1881 to Catholic scholars. In recent years, the restrictions on researchers have been slightly relaxed, but journalists, students, and amateur historians remain barred. And even a researcher meets the requirements to view texts from the archive, no browsing is allowed: Scholars have to go in with a plan and stick to it.

In 2012, however, the Vatican decided to the celebrate the archive’s 400th anniversary by making 100 items available for public viewing for the first time at the Capitoline Museums in Rome. Of course, with 50 miles of shelves and materials dating back to the 8th century, 100 documents only scratches the surface. Here are some of the highlights.

1. Pope Leo X’s Papal Bull Excommunicating Martin Luther
2. A Petition Asking the Pope to Annul Henry VIII’s Marriage to Catherine of Aragon
3. Transcripts of the Knights Templar Trials
4. Correspondence about the Trial of Galileo
5. Letters from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis
6. A Letter from Michelangelo Asking for Back Pay
7. The Papal Bull that Divided the New World
8. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
9. A Letter that Mary, Queen of Scots, Wrote from Prison
10. A Church Record from 809 CE
11. Clement XII’s Request to the Seventh Dalai Lama
12. The Design of a Flying Machine Invented by a Brazilian Priest
13. A Call for a New Crusade to the Holy Land
14. A Plea from China’s Grand Empress Dowager Wang

Pope Leo X’s Papal Bull Excommunicating Martin Luther

On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicated Luther, thereby launching the Reformation and Protestantism. The earlier pope-issued Exsurge Domine had given Luther 60 days to recant his condemnation of the Church as outlined in his 95 Theses. Luther responded by burning his copy.

A Petition Asking the Pope to Annul Henry VIII’s Marriage to Catherine of Aragon

In 1530, an heir-less King Henry was eager to marry Anne Boleyn—but he was already married to Catherine of Aragon and divorce was not permitted within the Catholic Church. Despite the 3-foot-wide letter signed by 81 members of Parliament and clergy (including the Archbishop of Canterbury), and threatening language warning “a refusal of annulment would require recourse to extreme measures for the good of the kingdom which we would not hesitate to take,” Pope Clement VII refused, resulting in the formation of the Church of England. Many of the seals of the signatories were affixed to the petition with a red ribbon, a practice that is sometimes considered the source of the term red tape.

Transcripts of the Knights Templar Trials

After enjoying centuries of wealth and privilege as an elite army during the Crusades, the Knights Templar’s prestigious status came to be seen as a liability. In what was likely an effort to avoid his financial debt to the order, Philip IV of France had all the knights arrested on October 13, 1307, and charged with heresy. After years of torture, many admitted to the trumped-up charges and were eventually burned at the stake. Pope Clement V ultimately disbanded the order under intense pressure from Philip. In 2007, the 60-meter-long document that comprises the minutes from the lengthy trials was finally made public—revealing that the pope had first intended to pardon the Knights Templar before he was coerced into condemning them.

Correspondence about the Trial of Galileo

By the 1600s, philosophers were starting to question whether Earth was really the center of the universe. The Church maintained that it was and persecuted anyone who publicly said otherwise. Physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei had already been reprimanded for his theories in 1616, but had successfully defended himself by claiming that he had simply discussed the idea of a heliocentric solar system without necessarily believing it. That argument failed to hold up in 1633, when the investigation under Pope Urban VIII found Galileo “vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world.”

Letters from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis

Both letters were written to Pope Pius IX in 1863 at the height of the American Civil War. In his request that the pope accept Union Brigadier General Rufus King as the U.S. representative to the Papal States, Lincoln made no mention of the violence tearing his country apart. Confederate President Davis, on the other hand, detailed the horrors of “the war now waged by the government of the United States against the states and people over which I have been chosen to preside.” Davis’s not-so-subtle angling to have the Confederate states recognized as an independent country by the Vatican failed, but only just. Robert E. Lee believed that Pius was the only world leader who recognized the Confederacy.

A Letter from Michelangelo Asking for Back Pay

The letter warned Pope Julius II that the Vatican guards hadn’t received their paychecks in three months, and were threatening to walk off the job. It's not clear what ended up happening (or not happening) as a result of the artist’s warning.

The Papal Bull that Divided the New World

On May 4, 1493—just a year after Christopher Columbus sailed to Hispaniola—Pope Alexander VI issued the Inter Caetera, which gave Spain control over all unclaimed lands 100 leagues away from the Azores and Cape Verde. Effectively, this meant that the eastern part of present-day Brazil would belong to Portugal, and the rest of South America belonged to Spain.

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception

On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX issued the Ineffabilis Deus, officially committing to the Apostolic Constitutions the belief that Mary was conceived without sin.

A Letter that Mary, Queen of Scots, Wrote from Prison

Mary fled to England in 1568 after a Scottish revolt, hoping that Queen Elizabeth I would protect her. But as the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, Mary had a strong claim to the English throne—she was next in line after Henry VIII’s legitimate children, of whom only Elizabeth remained alive. To protect her reign, Elizabeth imprisoned Mary for more than two decades before finally executing her on February 8, 1587. Just a few months before her death, Mary wrote to Pope Sixtus V from her prison cell at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, begging him to save her life and professing her Catholic faith, while also railing against her treatment and the alleged illegitimacy of the tribunal that had condemned her.

A Church Record from 809 CE

The oldest loose parchment kept in the entire archive dates from 809 CE and notes part of a donation to a church in Venice.

Clement XII’s Request to the Seventh Dalai Lama

In the letter to the Buddhist leader’s deputy, the pope requested protection for a Franciscan mission in Tibet and freedom for the friars to preach the Gospel.

The Design of a Flying Machine Invented by a Brazilian Priest

Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, a priest who lived in the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the late 1600s and early 1700s, spent his life studying how disparities in density should allow certain objects to float through the air. He made several demonstrations at the court of King John V of Portugal and designed plans for a never-completed flying machine, called the Passarola, which resembled a giant inflated bird.

A Call for a New Crusade to the Holy Land

Issued in 1198, Pope Innocent III’s papal bull effectively launched the Fourth Crusade, which saw the Christian militia force the fall of Constantinople. Though the pope had originally sanctioned the crusade, the sack of the massive city was so brutal he condemned it as “an example of affliction and the works of Hell.”

A Plea from China’s Grand Empress Dowager Wang

Written on a silk scroll around 1650, the letter from the empress, who had converted to Catholicism, appealed to Pope Innocent X for help after the Qing Dynasty forced her to flee Zhaoqing. Unfortunately, the letter never reached Pope Innocent X—he died before the messenger was able to gain an audience.

Discover More Religious History:

A version of this story was published in 2015; it has been updated for 2025.